The Rev. Barry Lynn, executive director of Citizens United for Separation of Church and State, has an article up up at HuffPo expressing concern over First Amendment brutalization. The source of his ire? Well, the NPS recently announced the 2010 recipients in the "Save America's Treasures" grant program. And with it, Christianity is cemented as national religion. Apparently.

“If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other.”                   -- Mother Teresa

Dudes are notoriously lame when it comes to Valentine’s Day. Over the years, my actions and inactions have placed me among the ranks of Troglodites who ignore or defame the meaning of this celebration.

           You may not know it, if you watch only Washington Beltway politics, but we are currently in the midst of a housing crisis of monumental proportions. It is a housing crisis initially caused by the inadequate regulation of private sector mortgage lending when George W. Bush was president. It is a housing crisis which was subsequently transformed and compounded by the large scale involuntary unemployment which the 2008 financial crisis and resulting recession left in its wake. It is a crisis which the Obama Administration inherited, and which has deepened on its watch.

I thought something romantic and sad was required for Valentine's day and thinking about it, up popped the saddest love story I remember. A story that if it wasn't true would be pure schmaltz.

This all happened when I was a little kid.  My stepfather was a doctor of musicology with a masters in psychology and was a pioneer in using musical therapy in the treatment of the mentally ill. He worked at a huge Veteran's Administration hospital on Chicago's North Shore. Those were fat days in the USA and the hospital had a huge orchestra and choirs and a "big band", all of this was my stepfather's turf.... He was the musical director of an insane asylum.

As soldiers and civilians cart away the metal barricades and debris, Tahrir Square has begun to return to normal. But what's normal has forever changed. For Egyptians, Tahrir finally does mean Liberation.

Like many things in that country, Tahrir Square hasn't always been what it purports to be.
At its core, it isn't even a square; it's a circle. An enormous traffic circle -- what the Brits call a roundabout.

From the growing Muslim revolution, how or whether Muslim nations integrate with the European Union may be key. The EU absorbed the post-Wall '89-ers, and they can somehow do it again. It's tempting to think a Muslim satellite of the EU would work but no one wants to be on the 2nd team (take Turkey as an example). And for all the EU's hesitancy about the Muslim world, it's time for the EU to step up - as it did when it fast-tracked East Europe. 

Aren't you just a little bit jealous? Revolution is sweeping the middle east as those whose interests take a back seat to the oligarchs who have longed ruled the country got fed up. They collected together and forced change.

BENEATH THE SPIN • ERIC L. WATTREE

Today's pair of speeches by Mubarak and Suleiman have left me speechless.

Ditto for President Obama. After optimistically predicting this afternoon the world was about to watch history unfold, he avoided appearing on camera to eat his words. But the White House's written statement conveyed a clear sense of disappointment, if not betrayal.